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Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

I’m eating cookies that taste like Christmas. This morning, my son’s breath smelt like fall. Damp air and cocoa in hand and I’m back at Living Waters on a rainy day.

Change is in the air. Fall blew in. Dry, crisp air numbs my extremities. The leaves are on their last hurrah before their winter demise. Berries are no longer in season; apples rule the produce.

Seasons provide a refreshing rhythm.

Bronson recently walked. For a whoppie pie. Who wouldn’t? But my sigh of relief quickly retreated to an exasperated inhale. It was short-lived. For whatever reason, Bronson continues to insist he needs assistance to move. Unless, of course, there’s a sweet he wants near by.

He will walk, but only when it’s his idea and he feels like it. He wants to change on his own time, his own rhythm.

But don’t we all?

I like change. In theory. I like it when I like it. When I’m ready to change, ready to move forward. But that’s not usually how change works. It’s a pushy nag. It’s unrelenting. It arrives on a dreary day that should belong to a hot drink and an old movie. It arrives when I’m too tired. For me, it arrives in groups. It’s never satisfied by my inching ways. It insists that I lunge forward.

Like Bronson, I usually change in a two-steps-forward-one-back-fashion. Now that I’m watching a child do this stubbornly, I realize my behavior is a bit immature. Stepping into change means stepping out of what I just left behind.